they would find their more distant neighbors assembling outside with the horses and wagons that brought them secured in the rambling sheds nearby and within sound of the fine old hymns that would soon be rolling out through the opened windows. The motorist of today on Cape Cod will, in time, begin to look for familiar landmarks. A white spire soaring above the pines indicates the presence of a village and each has identifying characteristics of its own. To the traveller coming home to the Cape there is no other landmark as welcome a sight as the old, gilded weather cock which perches above the West Parish Meeting House at West Barnstable. When, from the new Mid-Cape Highway, you first catch sight of this grand bird shining, golden and bright and triumphant above the trees you know that you are really on the Cape and that an old friend is keeping the same watchful eye over land and sea of today as in the days of the American Revolution and before. For the weather-cock crowns the steeple of the oldest Congregational church building in all America. It is a beautiful structure which served the Town of Barnstable as Meeting House during the most fateful days of American history and, through the foresight of some Cape Codders, it is now being restored to its full, and original magnificence. Already the exterior of the church has been restored until it is now the very same one that was familiar to Commodore John Percival, Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, James Otis, and a host of other great men and women of the County in the days when greatness seemed to touch all those within sight of the dunes and the salt marshes of Barnstable. The site for the Meeting House could not have been better chosen and today, more than ever, the old church, on a slight elevation where tree-lined Cape roads meet, is an edifice of great beauty and dignity, commanding attention. As beautiful as the newly-restored church appears from the outside, it is, nevertheless, the unfinished interior that proves the wisdom of the restoration program. Looking upwards at the dome of the Meeting House with its tremendous beams and unique bowed rafters is an awesome experience. Standing there it is impossible not to feel in touch with the historic past, with the very beginnings of America. And you marvel at the artistry and ingeniousness of the builders who carved these huge timbers from local forests, who weighted them down for a full year to achieve the desired bow shape, who built a framework which is as staunch and true today as ever it was, and that has stubbornly resisted the encroachments of passing fashions. The workers who are in charge of the restoration have been touched with the magic of the place. They speak with great respect of those long-ago builders of the Cape and they point with enthusiasm to the many ways in which the historic structure is coming back to life.